Produced by Mark Hamann, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.This file was produced from images generously made available by theCanadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions.
These letters were never intended for publication, and were onlythe details written to our family of an every-day life, and nowput in the same shape and composition; not as a literary work, butin hopes that the various experiences we underwent may be usefulto future colonists intending to emigrate and farm, either inManitoba or Colorado.
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Queenstown, April 14th.
What joy! four hours in harbour given us to recruit our emaciatedforms and write you a few lines of our experiences and trials. Youwished us to keep a diary with every detail, which we will try ourbest to do, beginning by telling of the cheerless journey toLiverpool in rain, the elements even seeming to lament ourdeparture. The bad weather has lasted more or less ever since,just one gleam of sunshine brightening us up on leaving the wharf,but we saw nothing of the Mersey or the surroundings. The onlything that struck us most forcibly was the smallness of our ship,though it was 6,000 tons. It has just been re-docked andoverhauled, and still smells horribly of paint and full ofworkmen, whom, however, we drop here, in exchange for 1,200emigrants. These, with about sixty first-class passengers and ahold full of potatoes, form our cargo. We began life bravely lastnight, enjoying a very good dinner, and after playing a rubber ofwhist retired to our berths congratulating ourselves on whatexcellent sailors we were going to be; but alas!… Dressing thismorning was too difficult, the ship rolled fearfully, even thefriends who came with us thus far, and consider themselves first-class sailors, think that it will be more prudent to go by trainthrough Ireland home, instead of waiting for the return boat ofthe same line which calls here on Sunday and is to take them toLiverpool. We almost wish we could turn tail; the prospect of tendays more of the briny ocean is not what at this moment we mostfancy. However, in the short time we have been in harbour we havebeen recruiting to start afresh, and hope for better weather.
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Mid Atlantic.
Dearest M.
I sadly fear I must have contributed more paving-stones for acertain region; for many good resolutions did I make in starting,and not one of them has been kept, not even so much as writingdaily a portion of a letter to be sent home from New York. And nowmy long story will have to be cut short, and the doings of thelast fifteen days will have to be crowded into a very limitedspace; for we are in sight of land, and our excitement can only becompared to that of school boys the last day of the term. The joyof landing will not be unmingled with regrets in parting from ourfellow-passengers, with whom we have become fast friends; and weare inclined mutually to believe in transmigration of souls, andthat we must have known each other in some prior state. Some aregoing into Minnesota, three of them having bought 13,000 acres inthe Red River valley, which they are going to farm on a largescale, and hope in four years to have made fortunes, another ownsmines in Colorado, having been one of the first pioneers of the